


No Holiday

by greenapricot



Series: No Holiday [1]
Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s05e05, Extended Scene, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 16:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20951195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: Duncan raises the bottle to Jimmy’s retreating back, looks up at the Merrie Dancers, and takes a hearty swig. There’s not quite enough whisky left to completely dull the echo of Jimmy’s words in his head, but he’ll give it a go.





	No Holiday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notajoinerofthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notajoinerofthings/gifts).

> An extension of the scene where Duncan and Jimmy look at the northern lights on the beach near the end of 5x05. 
> 
> For notajoinerofthings who is out there keeping the Shetland love alive with her excellent headcanons and deserves a Jimmy/Duncan fic that's less angsty than this one (but this is what I've go right now).
> 
> Title from The National's Guilty Party because these lines are such an s5 Duncan mood: I say your name / I say I'm sorry / I know it's not working / I'm no holiday

Duncan raises the bottle to Jimmy’s retreating back, looks up at the Merrie Dancers, and takes a hearty swig. There’s not quite enough whisky left to completely dull the echo of Jimmy’s words in his head, but he’ll give it a go.

_This is about how you managed to destroy every single good thing in your life. You...destroy every single good thing in your life._

It’s the same old story. Jimmy says something cutting leaving Duncan flayed, raw, and thinking of all the things he could have said. All the things he’s glad he never said. Jimmy and his self-righteous superiority and the moral high ground that Duncan can never quite get purchase on, walking away when he’s said his piece. As if Duncan hasn’t been trying, as if he’s content with every good thing slipping through his fingers like so much sand. But all his trying is never enough for Jimmy fucking Perez. 

He looks out over the sea and takes a long pull on the bottle. Watches the green lights shift and slide above him; beautiful, at times seemingly close enough to touch, but eternally unreachable. A metaphor for everything he has ever tried to hold on to.

Jimmy is almost to the steps that lead up to the house, his hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunched forward as if he’s bracing himself against Duncan’s eyes on his back. And Duncan has had enough, he takes another drink and shouts after Jimmy.

“Walking away again, aye? Cut me down and leave me to it?” Duncan watches Jimmy stop, one foot on the first step, and shake his head. He doesn’t turn around. “You say all that shite and you don’t give me a chance to defend myself. Every damn time.” 

“You’ve had plenty of chances,” Jimmy says, almost too quiet for Duncan to hear at this distance. He still doesn’t turn around. 

Duncan takes another drink, half shouting across the distance between them, gesturing with the bottle in his hand. “That was a shite apology, you know. Anyone ever told you, you aren’t meant to follow up an apology by saying something worse than what you’re apologising for?” Jimmy turns and takes a couple of steps back in Duncan’s direction.

“You sorry about what you said just now as well?” Duncan continues. “Don’t think you are. I think you’re enjoying this.” He takes another swig and a couple of less than steady steps toward Jimmy. “Do you feel better about yourself when you put me down? Is that it? Someone worse off than you? Suppose I can fill that role, aye. One thing I’m good at. Jimmy Perez’s punching bag.” 

Jimmy moves a few steps closer. “That’s not fair.” 

“Ach, we’re talking about fair now. Great.” Duncan brandishes the bottle at Jimmy. “Have a drink with me, Jimmy-boy.”

Jimmy shakes his head but closes the distance between them all the same. He gives Duncan a hard look then grabs the bottle and takes a swig. 

“You want to try again? With the apology?” Duncan asks. 

Jimmy takes another swig and looks up at the lights still shimmering green above the sea. “You don’t make it easy.”

Duncan barks out a harsh laugh. “You wouldn’t know what to do with easy,” he says, holding out his hand for the bottle. 

“I think you’ve had enough, aye?” 

“Not nearly.” Duncan takes a step forward, pulling the bottle from Jimmy’s hand, taking a drink.

Jimmy gives him that long-suffering look. Duncan is so bloody tired of that look. He’s so bloody tired of all of Jimmy’s looks; disappointed, resigned, pitying. Like whatever shite Duncan has gotten himself into is only to be expected. Inevitable. Jimmy says he’s tired, well Duncan’s bloody well knackered. He’s tired of being wrongfooted, tired of fucking things up left and right even when he’s trying so hard not to, tired of watching the things he truly wants dancing just out of reach. Tired of Jimmy giving him lectures and accusing him of things he would never do. Tired of Jimmy standing there sober, watching him from that moral high ground of his.

Duncan holds the bottle out toward Jimmy again. “Have some more. You’ve got some catching up to do.” 

Jimmy makes no move to take the bottle and Duncan steps forward, pushing it into Jimmy’s chest. Jimmy lets out a soft _oof_ as it makes contact and looks down at Duncan, surprise and something else Duncan can’t parse in his eyes. 

“Go on, then.” Duncan presses the bottle harder into Jimmy’s chest until Jimmy’s hand comes up to grab it, his fingers warm on Duncan’s cold hand. 

Jimmy looks angry now. Proper angry, and that’s one better than disappointed. 

“What are you playing at?”

“I’m not playing,” Duncan says, pressing the bottle harder into Jimmy’s chest. 

“Enough, away to bed with you.”

“Is that an invitation?” Duncan asks, his tone cutting. He wants to see Jimmy wrongfooted. He wants to see him drunk and messy, teetering on the edge of control.

Jimmy shakes his head and looks up, their hands still clenched together over the bottle. Their eyes meet. Duncan can feel Jimmy’s breath on his cheek. Time stops for half a second; an intake of breath, half an exhale, and they both move at once, grabbing for each other, crushing their mouths together, the bottle hitting the sand with a dull thud. 

The kiss is rough, aggressive, and fucking gorgeous; a push-pull, a clash of teeth, and arms, and legs, and hands at each other’s clothes. Duncan pushes forward and Jimmy pulls back, half leading, half dragging them into the shelter of the seawall, out of view of the road and the house; panting, hands scrabbling for purchase on coats and waistbands and shirt fronts, their feet in a tangle as they try to walk and kiss and get in each other’s pants at the same time. 

Duncan bites at Jimmy’s lip and slides his hand under his coat and up the back of his jumper. Jimmy hisses at Duncan’s cold fingers on his skin, moans into Duncan’s mouth, and lets out a groan as his back hits the stone of the seawall. Duncan pushes his knee between Jimmy’s legs. Jimmy is hard. They’re both hard. Duncan leans forward until his cock is pressed into Jimmy’s hip and Jimmy groans again.

“Fuck,” Duncan breathes, moving back just enough to get his hands between them and fumble Jimmy’s flies open as Jimmy pulls at Duncan’s jeans, pushing each other’s pants down until they can get their hands on each other and, _Oh fuck yes._

The sea air is cold and Jimmy’s hand is warm and Duncan almost sobs when Jimmy wraps his fingers around his cock. The kiss turns sloppy, more sloppy, nothing more than the two of them panting against each other’s open mouths, gasping for air and sensation. Duncan presses Jimmy into the wall, matching the rhythm of his hips and hand to Jimmy’s fingers around his cock. _God, just like that. Yes._

Jimmy makes a keening noise in the back of his throat when he comes, throwing his head back against the seawall. When Duncan follows he sees sparks behind his eyes, bright and electric, his own Merrie Dancers. He collapses into Jimmy, breath coming in ragged gasps. For almost an entire minute he doesn’t feel like utter shite. 

“Fuck.” Duncan turns and slumps against the wall beside Jimmy.

Jimmy flashes him a small, sad smile tinged with regret, then does up his jeans and pushes himself up off the wall. He wipes his hands on his jeans.

“Come in to bed, Duncan,” he says. “You can’t stay out here all night.”

“To your bed?” Duncan concentrates on tucking in his shirt and zipping himself up. 

“No, to—” Jimmy looks horrified. It would be funny if it didn’t feel like a knife to the gut. “Cassie’s in the house.”

“You’d bed me properly if she wasn’t?”

“No, I—” Jimmy shakes his head and looks at the ground. “Away, just come inside.”

“In a minute,” Duncan says, with no intention of doing anything of the kind.

Jimmy gives him a searching look. For a moment, it looks like he might say more, Duncan wants him to say more, but Jimmy only shakes his head again and says, “Okay.” When he walks away, he doesn’t look back.

Duncan walks back toward the water and picks up the bottle. Still a bit left. He downs the last of the whisky and chucks the empty bottle into the sea. The resulting splash is anticlimactic. The dancers are still merrie above him; small, pathetic creature that he is down here on the wet sand, with another in a long string of terrible decisions under his belt. 

He’s not going to wake up in the morning to Jimmy eyeing him over coffee and apologising for what they’ve done. He’s not going to apologise. It’s been a long time coming and he’s not sorry, he’ll regret it when he’s sober, but he’s not sorry that he knows what Jimmy feels like under his hands, what he sounds like when he comes. Duncan turns his back on the sea and the green-tinged sky and starts walking.

______


End file.
